Note:This article is mistaken. We are leaving it up because we don’t want to pretend that we’ve never made mistakes, including serious ones like this one. Assad most definitely was responsible for the different poison gas attacks, including the one referred to here. We think Clay Claiborne for bringing this mistaken article to our attention (see his comment) and we recommend his article which sets the record straight. In our own defense, we can only say that as time passed by, Oaklandsocialist completely changed its view of the events in Syria and came to recognize that what was happening there was a counterrevolution.
It makes no sense for Assad to have used the poison gas. He was winning the war without it, and he knew that using it would likely provide the excuse that the Obama administration has been seeking to bomb his forces.
One article analyzes the claim that Assad did it and shows that this claim, as presented by US Secretary of State Kerry, is similar to the one made by Colin Powell on Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. It then goes on to analyze the allegations that the “rebels” did it.
“A Jordanian freelancer and journalism grad student… “spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents.” The article reports that “many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out” the chemical attack. The recipients of the chemical weapons are said to be Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda-linked rebel faction that was caught possessing sarin nerve gas in Turkey, according to Turkish press reports (OE Watch,7/13).
Here is the article.
One must consider what is at stake here. Energy policy and access to oil has always been central to foreign policy of every major capitalist nation. How else can they dominate the world if they can’t power their ships and fly their planes? As world oil supplies dwindle, an increasingly bitter struggle for access to and control over those dwindling supplies is being waged. No crime is too great, no tactic too dirty in gaining the upper hand.